[4] Owen was educated at Putney High School and from there went to St Hugh's College, Oxford University, where she studied medicine and took a BA in Physiology.
[2] The fund was established to promote and develop Labour's cultural policies under the Shadow Arts Minister Mark Fisher in the run-up to the 1992 general election.
Under her editorship from 1993 to 2006, Index became a vital source on all aspects of free expression for media and human rights organisations throughout the world and won several major awards.
[11] Free Word was conceived in 2004, and Owen took it through from an idea to concrete reality, finding the funding from Norwegian foundation Fritt Ord to buy a building for the centre in Farringdon Road.
Following the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2021, Fritt Ord confirmed its intention to sell the Farringdon building, which was closed and its resident organisations vacated by May 2021.
[2] Owen is the editor of the anthology Fathers: Reflections by Daughters (Virago, 1983)[16] and Whose Cities (with Mark Fisher), published by Penguin in 1991.